Westlandic
Westlandic, (Westlandic: Vestlensk) is a West Germanic Language, and the official language of Westland. It is an Indo-European Language belonging to the West Germanic branch, although sharing close links with some Nordic languages such as Icelandic of Faroese, in that it has no morphed far from its original routes of Old English with influences of Old Norse and is highly inflected. Westlandic is fully inflected with five grammatical cases, (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammatical numbers, (singular, plural, and dual) and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). The dual forms occurred in the first and second persons only and referred to groups of two. Adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles agree with their antecedent nouns in case, number and gender. Finite verbs agree with their subject in person and number. Nouns come in numerous declensions. Verbs come in nine main conjugations (seven strong and two weak), each with numerous subtypes, as well as a few additional smaller conjugations and a handful of irregular verbs. The main difference from other Indo-European languages, such as Latin, is that verbs can be conjugated in only two tenses (vs. the six "tenses" – really tense/aspect combinations – of Latin), and have no synthetic passive voice. Gender in nouns was grammatical, as opposed to the natural gender that prevails in modern English. That is, the grammatical gender of a given noun did not necessarily correspond to its natural gender, even for nouns referring to people. For example, sø súnn (the Sun) is feminine, se móna (the Moon) is masculine, and þat wíf "the woman/wife" is neuter. Pronominal usage can reflect either natural or grammatical gender, when it conflicted. In the 9th century, the Westlandic Language came under influence from Old Norse, which introduced letters 'k', 'v' and 'j' which increased far more in use, as the language came far more similar to Old Norse with suffixes changing. Wessen is written using a modified Latin Alphabet. In addition to the 26 standard letters, Wessen has three added letters, (Þþ, Ðð, Ææ), aswell as 8 letters with diacritics. Alphabet Geographic Distribution Phonology Numerals Grammar Verbs There are four moods in Westlandic: indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive. As with most inflected languages, the verbs in Westlandic determine (or govern) the case of the subsequent nouns, pronouns and adjectives of a sentence. In the infinitive, most Westland verbs end in -a. The exceptions include a few verbs ending in -á. The two auxiliaries are important, since they turn up in various places to make up for the poverty of simple tenses. Þwo is, of course, very common. There are three main groups of weak verbs in Westland: -ar, -ir, and -ur, referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the third person singular present. The strong verbs and the irregular verbs (auxiliaries, ri-verbs and valda) are a separate matter. Take the infinitive tælka (‘to talk’), for example: And compare with the verb, 'to be'; Nouns Westland nouns are much like Old English and Old Norse, both in form and inflection. They decline in four cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive) and vary in gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) and number (singular and plural). There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong and weak nouns, which are furthermore divided in smaller paradigms for declension, according to many criteria (sound-shifts, consonant clusters, etc.) Following are four examples of strong declension. Gla̋s means the drinking vessel glass, gler means the material glass. Those are etymologically the same words, but glas is a borrowing and gler is native. Adjectives Determiners Pronouns Prepositions Syntax Word Order Questions Relative and Subordinate Clauses Notable Dialects Text Examples Article 2 of the Declaration of Human Rights Rather Be ''Translation of the Song, 'Rather Be' by Clean Bandit. '' Category:Languages Category:Westland